#coffee potluck

[lovemesaysfood]

Hitting new notes with steamy coffee competitions

Coffee Potluck, we missed the mark!

I did fail to post the summary of last month’s tasting at Kahve! (yet to come!). I know we told you it was going to be the first Sunday of the month and we missed it, but there’s a very good reason for displacing this month’s cupping.   

Earlier this month I told a few of our subscribers the exciting news!  One really exciting piece of news was that our city Vancouver got featured in Barista Magazine!  

I always feel my writing isn’t good enough; too plain, too straight, not straight enough, you get the point– so writing this article was as if someone challenged me to write a short story using as many Vancouver cafe names as possible in one long breath.  The article is a survey of what I’ve seen living here in the last year, but by no means is it exhaustive!  Click Here to see how many of your friends show up in the field report.  Also in this issue are fascinating reports from Brazil and a great story on cold brew on throwdowns! – which brings me to my next topic.

 In the name of celebrating those in the article and this city, Coffee Potluck presents…

Capps for Cocks & Coochies - A phallic coffee art smackdown!

Vancouver’s first ‘adult’ coffee art competition where coffee competitors will go head-to-head pouring cappuccinos in the shape of genitalia. Judges hand selected from a group of industry leaders will be selecting winners based on aesthetics, likeness to the required shape, and taste. The competition will be a fast-pased bracket elimination format.

Hearts & flowers on your morning latte are pretty, but this is more than that.  A good friend I knew in Dublin lost her battle with cervical cancer on her 29th birthday this year and I can’t tell you how stunned and touched so many people were by her loss.  This has inspired me to continue the dialogue about the topic of screening.   

Our goal is to raise $500-$1000 for cancers below the waist. The entirety of the funds will be donated to Prostate cancer foundation & BC Women’s Foundation (their End Cervical Cancer project). Coffee Potluck inspires strong community building in specialty coffee and beyond.  

Can’t pour? Don’t worry.

We can still have loads of fun, watch as the competitors pour different capps.  Four Winds beer will be flowing from the taps and we have loads of doorprizes to tell you about throughout the evening.    

Admission by donation, Competitors can register for $15 at www.picatic.com/cappadoodledoo

 Want to compete?

Two more spots left for competitors and prizes will be awarded for the top three fancy pours!

Hope some of this has resonated with you, It’s my intention inspire a strong community of taste seekers and foster real encouraging relationships.  Let’s pour!

 Coffee potluck was started to share coffee with a friends.  Through conversations with coffee friends, we started to see that there was a real lack of cohesion in our city.  We wanted coffee community to come together! So we started a casual monthly gathering focused around cupping coffees.  I need to tell you more about that story later, but essentially it’s not just at a competition we see coffee culture together, but we want to have events that increase interest, visibility, and expertise in coffee. Push professionalism and knowledge within the industry and make coffee knowledge accessible to consumers too.  

Sometimes Vancouver gets a bad wrap for our cool exterior, but we have been extraordinarily lucky to land a host each month who whole-heartedly supports our event and community.  We share in the benefit of open dialogue and our audience hopefully goes back to support our previous hosts.  We want to make friends in Vancouver - this is one unconventional way to do it.   

[lovemesaysfood]

I'll have 'your most epic Gastown coffee, please.'

What we do, it’s not what we do but maybe why we do it. 

the why? It’s for the community. We are intent on bringing people together over coffee, learning from each other, and forming organic connections.  I think this is what trickles through our events. They aren’t perfect yet, but there is a sense of cohesion in the room.  

If you’re new to coffee, we don’t want to scare you.  Coffee questions? this is the place to bring them.  

Just imagine, Revolver on a quiet day... well, it's closed on Sundays, so that made for a perfect space. This is kind of a hipster, lifestyle blogger, coffee photographer, creative-hub in our city; also known for it’s mecca-ness reputation in Vancouver coffee, we are completely honoured to have shared coffee in this space.  One of our goals is to share coffees in interesting venues throughout the city and this is a very special one for me.  

 Did you come to see the space on an atypical day? Was it your first time to Revolver?  Is there something you thought was surprising about Coffee Potluck at Revolver?   We want to know, comment below. 

 The atmosphere in the long room in Archive on that Sunday afternoon was so relaxed. It was a mix of a few familiar faces and a lot, a lot of ones!  Some heavy-hitting food people, it was great to see the connection between such different citizens in our city.  Some that started in Vancouver, travelled around the world working coffee, others that work in other beverage industries wanting to learn more about coffee - but one thing holds true, they're loving coffee and loving the community just like us.  If that’s you, thank you.  

We covered a small bit of info on the Hario V60 brewer, Kris the in-house brew master chatted about the benefits and differences of brewing on V60.  

 We tasted a total of 12 coffees:

Rocanini Kenya Nyeri, Fully Washed - SL 28, SL 34 & Ruiru 11 varieties 

Square Mile Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, Washed - mixed heirloom varieties

De Mello Palheta Kenya Muthuthu-ini, Washed - SL 28, SL 34  

Caravan Ethiopia, Washed - heirloom varieties

Caravan Kenya, Washed - SL 28, SL 34

Timbertrain Brazil, Pulp Natural - Catuai

Verve Honduras, Washed - Bourbon, Pacas

Heart Ethiopia Gedeo Zone, Washed - Heriloom 

Dogwood Brazil Passeio, Natural

Moving Coffee Mystery coffee, revealed later  

 Drop Kenya, Washed - SL 28, SL 34, Peaberry

Rocket Coffee Columbia, Washed/ Sundried - Castillo & Caturra  

 Thankfully we had just enough cards to have the potluckees.  - Ask us about the cards!  

[lovemesaysfood]

Beachn' Brews - The most generous tasty brews in Vancouver

I can’t believe it’s been a full year we’ve had in Vancouver!  I’m not going have a rant here, just a quick share on gratefulness.  I’m grateful for the gracious people who have shared with us in this beautiful city and the friends who have embraced us.  On the exterior, it can be hard to break in to Vancouver, but when I really think about it we have experienced so much and gotten to know many of you friends – coffee friends. 

 Vancouverites. - "from they, to we"

It’s gone from “they” are like this, or they have tendencies to stick to their groups to “we”.   If we want to see things improve, or friends we want to make, it doesn't help to stick on the outside but instead take ownership of being part of the community of Vancouver. 

A part of me has taken-on the identity and this is a great place to be.  The friends will form around whatever your passions are.  

 Cold Brew

Cold brew has been really exploding on to the scene of coffee, be it Starbucks, 7eleven or your every-day-neighborhood cafe. Everyone is doing it, even Stumptown.  <chuckle here>

 With Coffee Potlucks we want to engage people, and the best way to do that is to understand where they’re at.  So many of my friends have asked ‘what is cold brew’ or ‘what is new with cold brew?’ and ‘why does it seem like everyone is doing it?’ 

 The answer is here, the obvious reason is it’s a cold drink in the summer months.  Get your caffeine and still enjoy coffee.  That’s the easy answer, but according to a recent RE:CO lecture, market analysis says that consumers treat cold brew very differently than coffee. They drink it in the morning (just like coffee), and they continue to drink it later on into the afternoon and evening hours.   All terminology of retail food ‘categories’ aside, this is a chance for people who might pass coffee by, to taste it and be interested.  

 The counter argument is that it doesn’t taste as nice and highlight the flavours of the origin of a coffee or the body.  Where specialty coffee exists is to showcase origin and bring the best to the customer, to highlight the quality standards we 'expect' from farmers, and to tell people about that.  Some may argue cold brew doesn’t do that, nor taste nice and therefore, we shouldn’t do it.  Afterall isn’t that how every specialty cafe got out of doing hazelnut syrups? - We stopped apologising.  Contrary to the previous statement, cold brew, in general does not adulterate coffee with flavour additives and sweetening agents.  

 I think the positives are that you can have a conversation about coffee and create curiosity without being standoff-ish. Most definitely we could interest more people in the story of coffee that might have otherwise passed us by. In my mind, that is a positive. 

 However, I am fully aware that you are entitled to your own opinion. Speciality coffee has gotten to where it is by being unapologetically dedicated to quality and that has achieved us a great spot in the market but it’s also good to grow the market as a whole. 

 OK, obviously I’m feeling ranty today. 

 On Vancouver’s Beachn’ Brews

 We had some bitchin’ brews late last month.  The intention was to have a laid back summer hang out; lawn chairs, beach towels, scenery, scent of sea and subconsciously make it totally about coffee.

 Well we had just that. 

 One realization in the process is how much we complain about coffee industry in our city being competitive and un-engaging.  But this was our first attempt at putting it to industry and asking for their support and it was overwhelming! We had loads of cold brew offered for tasting and it suddenly made us realize just how much selection we have in this town. 

Brews are cold and ready. Get out here! #beachnbrews #coffeepotluckyvr

A photo posted by Coffee Potluck (@coffeepotluck) on Jul 31, 2016 at 2:44pm PDT

 One person on Facebook commented on our post and said

“Wow, I wish we had that in Calgary” that’s when I realized – wait, we are really lucky!

As a tribute we to our friends 'Vancouver Coffee Snob' who wrote the 10-best list of cold brews, see how many of these we tasted ;).

Here’s the list of thanks people we need to thank!  And a huge thank you to Porto Café who came out personally with a bottle of their cold brew. The benefit of tasting the different cold brews side-by-side was appreciating the selection of bean or origin and secondly seeing the effect of different processes on the final product.  From the way coffee is brewed, temperature and time, is it in a vat or a tower, how it’s filtered, and how it’s bottled or nitro.  There was a great variance of flavours!

 Come talk to us personally (at the next potluck) to get the low down on favourites.  Did you like this post? Share it with friends on facebook and the social medias!